


Shadows Among Many

by TheTiniestTortoise



Series: Tales from the Dusty Trail (Tumblr Prompt Fills & Requests) [4]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: A bit of mutual pining, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:08:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21712768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTiniestTortoise/pseuds/TheTiniestTortoise
Summary: You find Arthur after he gets into a fight one night and have some words with him.
Relationships: Arthur Morgan/Reader
Series: Tales from the Dusty Trail (Tumblr Prompt Fills & Requests) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1557991
Comments: 4
Kudos: 99





	Shadows Among Many

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr Anon asked: if you're still taking requests either “you can’t dictate what’s best for someone else.” or “i don’t want to be alone anymore.” for Arthur? Thanks!
> 
> I tried to cram in both!

He’s drunk. Everyone in camp’s drunk, it’s no big surprise, but he’s in one of those _moods._ The kind of mood where he picks a fight with somebody like Bill or Micah, and then fists start flying and men have to be pulled off of each other before they start smashing bottles or drawing more dangerous weapons. He’s skulked off somewhere now, to lick his wounds and nurse his ego. Micah hit him so hard at one point before they got separated that you’re sure he’s going to have a shiner around his eye tomorrow.

You aren’t in much better shape than anyone else; your brain is hazy with drink, and you know you shouldn’t follow him, even as you toss your empty off somewhere behind you and grab a fresh one from a case stacked beside Pearson’s chuck wagon, making your way past in ungainly strides.

He’s been getting like this more often, lately. Drunk to the point of unreasoning hostility. Spending extended periods away from camp, off by himself doing God only knows what. You don’t know if anyone else notices. Hosea, you think, and maybe Tilly. She’s always paid far more attention to things than she lets on. In fact, she’s made it clear several times that you should just _talk_ to Arthur instead of making offhanded comments to her and the other girls, gossiping and complaining because that’s all you can think to do with your mutinous feelings. 

You’re tipsy enough tonight that you think you might take her advice. You’ve been teetering on the edge of an abyss for some time now, one whose threshold you’ve been much too scared to cross. Arthur is a brute, a crude heavy and a gunslinger the likes of which you’d only read about before joining up with Dutch’s gang of transient criminals. But the longer you spend here, the more onions you peel day-in, day-out for Pearson’s stews, the more of a simile your brain begins to recognize. Arthur is like those onions, made up of layer upon layer of wildly conflicting states of being.

You’ve seen him scratching away in that journal of his; he’ll do it anywhere and everywhere, though he is protective of whatever secrets lie inside it. You’ve seen him cooing to his horse sweetly, rubbing her in the spots she likes best and treating her with peppermints and sugar cubes and husky words of affection. You’ve seen him with young Jack, always patient and encouraging, bringing the boy dime novels and long sought-after candies and sweets he comes across during his travels.

And you’ve seen him on nights like tonight; all biting sarcasm and venom, practically spoiling for a fight for seemingly no good reason. Quick to take offense at offhanded remarks and even quicker to demand satisfaction for the insult. Rolling up his shirtsleeves, spitting his half-finished cigarette into the dirt and cracking his knuckles in preparation for a proper beating.

You stalk down the grassy incline until it turns to sand at the shore of Flat Iron Lake. You stop, looking both ways down the length of the beach until you see him, a barrel-chested silhouette, just another shadow among many. He is perched on a huge chunk of driftwood some ways down, curled in on himself, scribbling in that damn book of his in the dark. As you approach, you start to see that he has a bottle held up to his head, trying to ease the ache in his skull by pressing the cool glass against his swelling eye.

You’re close enough now to hear a sudden snapping sound and then a flustered _‘son of a bitch!’_ rumbles out of him, slurred and frustrated. He throws the pencil into the sand at his feet like a dart; obviously, if he were sober, he could simply use his knife to shave it down to a fresh point, but he seems to have forgotten that particular trick.

“Well ain’t you a sorry sight.” You angle your head as you pop the seal on your beer, boldly moving to take a seat on the log beside him though you have not been invited.

He whips around to look at you and slaps the journal shut in the same moment, a tenuous grimace settling upon his features. “Jus’ what I need, more comments from the goddamn peanut gallery…”

You can’t help it; you snort out a little laugh. You have a tendency of doing that when things get awkward. “I don’t get it, Arthur, I really don’t.”

He narrows his eyes, reaches down blindly to search his satchel for a cigarette. He waits for you to continue, but you simply look off across the length of the lake and take a swig of your beer. He sighs. “Well? What is it you don’t get, then?”

“You. You’re what I don’t get.”

He scoffs as he reaches up to stick the acquired cigarette between his lips. He leans forward to prop his whiskey up in the sand so that he can find his matchbook. “Yeah, well…you ‘n me both, I suppose,” he mutters halfheartedly, muffled around the cigarette.

“I’m serious,” you shoot back, looking over at him directly now. “I hear you say how much you love this gang, how hard you fight for it, how you’d gladly _die_ for it - and then you’re just _gone._ And when you decide to wander back, you’re so full of piss ‘n vinegar, you can’t make it a full week without startin’ a fight with somebody. So yeah. I don’t get it.”

He sits there, silent and stoic for almost a minute before he finally strikes a match off the sole of his boot and brings it up to catch the end of his cigarette, a small red glow against the cloudy and starless night. He inhales deeply, squints his eyes as he tosses the match in the same direction as the pencil.

After an extended silence, you tentatively decide to push forward. “I, uh…I heard that Mary woman‘s been around, recently.”

His eyes dart back to you, seeming to sharpen against the stillness of the night. “Yeah, well, it don’t rightly matter what you heard, does it, Miss?”

You blink, taken aback by his curt tone. You don’t rightly know what else you should have expected, prodding his wounds as you are, but it stings nevertheless. You clutch your beer tightly, as if it were a lifeline; and right now, maybe it is. “I _was_ going to suggest,” you retort, clipped, “since you always seem to be _so_ unhappy with the rest of us, that maybe you should just leave the gang for good and all and go off with her! Ain’t that what you’ve always wanted? It is, to hear everyone else tell about it.”

You’re up from the log in a huff and turning to walk back to camp before you hear him bark out a short laugh from behind you. You want to keep walking, you _know_ you should, but for some reason you don’t. You half turn instead, pivoting on your heel to shoot him the dirtiest look you can muster.

“You think you can dictate what’s best for somebody else? You don’t know nothin’ about her,” he replies icily as he leans forward to snatch up the bottle of whiskey. “Nor me, for that matter.”

“Maybe that’s my problem.”

“Maybe it’s best it _stays_ that way.” His eyes cut back to you briefly before he upturns the bottle and takes a drink.

You narrow your eyes at him. He doesn’t ever act this way with the other women; it’s one of the reasons you were able to work up the courage to come out here in the first place. He’s pissed off, sure, but he’s usually always considerate with Jack and the girls. You can’t help wincing, a physical reaction to the obvious mess you’ve made of things. “I’m sorry I disturbed you, Mr. Morgan,” you mutter as you turn towards camp once more.

“Even if I wanted to…she wouldn’t have me, anyway.”

You find yourself stopping once more. You raise your eyes to the heavens, wondering briefly why you’re about to put yourself through this, then you turn around again. “What?”

He sighs, twiddling that cigarette between his fingers like he’s anxious. “I was never good enough for the likes of her. Her family made that abundantly clear, years ago. I…have seen her. Recently. And she saw fit to make it clear once again.”

Your brow twitches. You don’t quite know how to respond.

“I am a cheat. A liar. A thief ‘n a killer. A hellraiser,” he recites slowly, with purpose, as he looks over at you again. “Sometimes I forget that’s all I am ‘n I must be reminded, lest I start to get ideas above my station. So trust me when I tell you; the less you know, the better. My gettin’ ornery ‘n blowin’ off steam about it should be no concern of yours.”

It’s the change in his tone that strikes you the most; he sounds melancholy now, bordering on morose. There is a tinge of steel to it still, though. Like he very much wants to scare you off, and somehow regrets it at the same time. It’s very confusing, the way he acts like he wants you to go and yet keeps talking despite himself.

You’ve caught him observing you a few times in the past, by mere chance, especially when you’re involved in a discussion with another man in camp. Charles and Javier have both been very kind since you showed up, but you found yourself seeking their company less and less the more you noticed Arthur’s eyes on you. He’s tried to be discreet, but you’ve noticed. Oh, you’ve noticed.

And now here he sits, telling you very plainly that he does not desire your company. But the intonation in his voice, something about the way he sits and holds himself, is telling you otherwise. You already know what he is, what he does; what his place is in Dutch’s hierarchy. You aren’t sure why he feels the need to reiterate it.

So you brave the warning. You find yourself taking the handful of steps that lead you back to him, the sand soft and malleable beneath your feet. You bend down to prop your bottle against the driftwood and then straighten, angling your head as he starts to look up at you, very wary. “Let me see your face.”

Your hands are on him before he gets a chance to argue, settling in more comfortably to the role of nurse; a more favorable occupation to cutting vegetables, and one you’re not half bad at. You like tending to people. It makes you feel far more useful.

“I don’t-”

He tries to turn his head away as he flicks the butt of his cigarette into the sand, eyes refusing to meet yours, but you strengthen your hold on him, tut-tutting his childlike contrariness. You lean in closer, trying to distinguish the colors of bruising against the already gray and indigo palette of the night that surrounds you. His eye is already half-shut, and it will probably be fully so tomorrow until the swelling finally recedes in a few days. There is a cut over his cheekbone that still oozes blood.

“I don’t know why you insist on doin’ this to yourself,” you mutter as you reach up to untie your neckerchief, balling up one corner of it to gently dab the half-congealed mess from his face.

His good eye half-closes to match the swollen one and you swear you feel him leaning into your touch slightly. It could very well just be unsteadiness from all the whiskey, but it sends your heart fluttering mutinously either way. Christ, he’s still handsome even with bruises and a busted-up face.

“I…heard Micah say somethin’ very uncouth. ‘Bout you,” he mumbles guiltily, staring hard at the embroidery on your sleeve.

He’s caught you off guard again. Your hand stops its ministrations, pulling back from him almost as if it’s been shocked. “You started a fight - with Micah Bell - over me?”

He softly clears his throat, looks away from you down the beach and leans back on his perch warily. “I may be a degenerate lowlife, but I can still respect a lady’s honor,” he mutters, bringing the bottle of whiskey back up to press against his face and cutting his gaze to the ground. His hat, the one thing he could hide behind, was knocked off some time during the fight, and he’d stormed off before thinking of retrieving it; he regrets it now.

You don’t know what to say, so you simply - hastily - lick a clean part of your scarf, gently swipe the bottle aside and go back to dabbing the rest of the blood from his cheek. It buys you a few moments to process the information.

He sighs raggedly, lets his eyes slip closed with a small grimace of pain. “I deserve bein’ left alone. Don’t waste your time with me ‘n my foolishness, sweetheart…”

The pet name makes your heart do a near somersault in your chest. And then it promptly wants to break. Your lips purse into a tight frown, and before you can stop to think about it you’re leaning down and planting a chaste kiss dangerously close to the corner of his mouth. “You deserve my _thanks,_ Arthur,” you reply as you draw back, finally letting the rag drop back to your side, “even as I’m sure all the rest of your petty brawls _ain’t_ been about me.”

His eyes chase your lips as you leave him, and he feels a certain amount of unwanted warmth seeping away with your absence. “I just felt so _alone_ , since John up ‘n ran off on all of us. Even though he’s back, things…things ain’t the same. Nothin’s the same. I can’t seem to reconcile myself with any of it. Not with him, or Mary, or Dutch, or Micah. Or you…”

Your heart somersaults once more as the jumbled words just sort of spill their way out of him. He is wounded far beyond whatever cuts and bruises adorn the surface, and you suddenly begin to fathom how deep the scars of his past must actually go. “I-I don’t think I warrant that much attention,” you mutter almost guiltily.

“I ain’t stupid. Folk in this gang sure talk enough. I know women look at me, though I do not try ‘n invite it. I know _you_ look at me. And I…” He trails off, his mouth thinning out, struggling with articulating himself. “I don’t pine for Mary no more. I seen you lookin’ and then I looked back, and…and I am a goddamn selfish, insufferable fool…and I don’t _wanna_ feel alone no more,” he grits and stammers, anxiously flexing the fingers of his free hand before tightening them into a fist. He is silent for a beat before he blinks and shakes his head like he realizes he’s said far too much. “I, uh…m’sorry…”

You drop the neckerchief to reach out and take his hand in both of yours, noticing that he flinches as you do. A frown curls down the corners of your mouth. “Don’t be sorry, Arthur.” You maintain that connection, squeezing slightly, feeling the raised skin on his knuckles from years’ worth of small cuts and the eventual scars they left. “I don’t…don’t much like feeling alone, myself.”

His mouth twitches slightly. “You ain’t - I mean, it just don’t seem like-”

 _“Lotta_ things don’t seem the way they are.” You move to take a seat beside him once again, making sure to keep one hand clasped over his.

He blinks and nods, pulls in a big breath and lets out a big sigh as he looks away from you again. “Sure. Guess I know that well enough…”

“I’d very much like to be your friend, Arthur,” you can’t help muttering as you lean forward, bravely trying to catch his gaze, “if you were so inclined.”

He swallows thickly before turning back to meet your gaze, and you swear you can see something swell and recede like a tide behind those ocean eyes of his.

A small nod is all he is able to give in response, but it is enough, and he swears the small and grateful smile that sweeps across your features is like the sun sweeping away the rain. Despite his better sense he finds there are a great many things he’d be inclined to do if it meant getting to see that smile again.


End file.
